


Osiris Descending

by ErinPtah



Series: The Sunlit Millennium [1]
Category: Ancient Egyptian Religion, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon
Genre: Gen, Illustrated, Otaku Senshi, Sailor Wars Era, apocalypse: black hole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 13:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/478827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A broken-down alien craft has arrived in the isolated system of Ra, looking for help. Can the planets' youngest Sailor Soldier, with a warship and a small army backing her up, come to the rescue? Or will the Sailor Wars prove to be more than they can handle?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Xyll Saga](https://archiveofourown.org/works/467856) by [ErinPtah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinPtah/pseuds/ErinPtah). 



> This is a loose remix of the beginning of the ten-year-old [Xyll Saga](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/168460.html). See [the off-AO3 index page](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/171018.html) for profiles, artwork, and other extras. Follow-up stories may be coming, depending on how much I feel like writing.

The Gebelese Games, an interplanetary contest of skill and strength held every five Osiran years, were being held on Osiris itself for the first time in living memory. The planet's gravity, highest in the Ra system, made it the most popular place for athletes to train, and the least exciting one for them to compete. There would be no records set these Games.

Not that the disappointment had stopped people from throughout the system from flocking to Osiris. It had reached the point where the Royal Star Navy was out in force, fleets of starjumpers orbiting like flocks of oversized birds high above the planet's clouds, just waiting for someone to cause trouble.

Or, as Ensign Rasmi called it, "stupid babysitting."

The more optimistic Ensign Khepri preferred "getting paid overtime to watch the opening ceremonies."

"They shouldn't be paying you at all, then," said Rasmi flatly. All the screens in her jumper's cockpit were tuned to the empty starfields above, broken occasionally by a passing cargo ship or the silver sliver of Osiris' moon, Tatenen. Only her comm speakers, by virtue of being tuned to her fellow ensign's cockpit, were picking up any of the Games. "Even if there's not enough risk to justify putting us on guard in the first place, we should still do the guarding."

"And miss all this great dancing?" laughed Khepri. Her foremost screen was playing the satellite feed of the ceremony; she wasn't watching any of the others. "There's about a hundred ballerinas from Nefertem twirling in sync right now. I think they're supposed to be dressed as water lilies? Switch over, just for a minute, so you can tell me if I'm completely off base."

"No."

"Oh, come on. There are two Sailor Senshi on the ground in the city, and one has the Star Crystal on her. Who's going to be stupid enough to try anything?"

"Princess Amirah, peace upon her, hardly counts," pointed out Rasmi. The crown princess of Osiris, first of her generation to claim the mantle of Sailor Senshi from her mother, was only twelve years old. Everyone in the system, whether or not they were too polite to say it, thought that was ridiculously young. "And even if she did, Sailor Senshi can't solve ev—"

"Shush!" interrupted Khepri. "Queen Sopdet's coming out!"

She ignored Rasmi's harumph of disapproval, watching the screen with a broad grin as the ballerinas parted to make way for their monarch.

Queen Sopdet of Atum wore a pale-blue gown with a long trail of crushed satin, accented with strings of diamonds and pink tourmalines. It went beautifully with her hair, held up in two buns with long twintails streaming out behind them, all such an icy pink it was almost white. Her warm brown skin seemed to glow in contrast. She waved to the crowd for almost a minute, then held out her hand and summoned the Star Crystal: a jewel of deep rose, with five glittering points.

The brilliance that followed baffled the cameras. Streaks of pink light seared their lenses, impossible to digitize even on the high-definition feeds, making Khepri's small screen dissolve into pixels. She groaned in disappointment. At least it must have been impressive in person: the crowd was going wild.

"Atum Planet Power," added the Queen, "Light Up!"

To observers, the transformation was over in a flash. Although the Queen was approaching her middle years, with a seven-year-old daughter back in her home castle, some magic granted her the ability to look dignified in a uniform with a short pink skirt and lots of periwinkle-blue ribbons. The Star Crystal sat at the clasp of her pink collar.

"Sun Lily Fog!" exclaimed Sailor Atum, casting her attack high into the air. The fine mist dissipated over the entire arena, too thin to actually hurt anyone, instead covering the spectators and performers with a sweet scent and a light morning-dew chill.

At that same moment, out beyond the atmosphere, proximity alarms started going off.

 

***

 

Queen Banebded of Osiris, watching the ceremonies from a lavish open-air skybox, was not enjoying herself.

The Atum section of the procession had given way to the performers from Isis, who were doing their best but couldn't hope to measure up without a Sailor Senshi of their own to display. The only other senshi present was Banebded's daughter, Sailor Osiris; and as the outermost planet from Ra their section always came last, meaning by the time she came around the audience would be getting tired of parades and itching to move on to the events.

Not that Banebded blamed them. She herself was bored already. If not for the pride of seeing her own daughter standing up there, and of course the political value in paying respect to her fellow planets, she would have ducked out of the ceremonies already.

Spandex-clad acrobats from Isis were throwing paint on each other when one of her military advisers appeared at her elbow. "Your Greatness, we may have a situation."

For a split second, she almost felt grateful.

 

***

 

"Unidentified craft approaching at ten o'clock, thirty degrees from orbital. Juu Squad, let's greet 'em. Guard up, but keep your weapons stowed and stick to formation. We don't want any trouble we can avoid."

Rasmi was already pulling her jumper into position. Within a few moments her proximity sensors were registering the V-formation of her unit, Khepri's jumper off to her left, all of them approaching the blip of a craft that her AI could find no label for.

As the mystery ship's bulk took shape in her visual displays, reflecting little light but blotting out stars, Rasmi could see why the computer was baffled. She might be just an ensign, but she knew her ships, and this was no model made on any of Ra's five planets within the last century.

"Weapons present but not armed," reported the lieutenant's voice from the head of the squad, sounding as uncertain as they all probably felt. None of them had ever seen a real, working inter-star-system vessel in action before. Although "working" might have been a generous description. Maybe it was a design quirk of whatever alien planet had spawned the thing, but Rasmi would have said the ship looked...wrecked.

"Hailing...."

Fleetwide speakers crackled as the AIs figured out how to render an otherworldly signal.

Then a new image pixeled into place on their comm screens.

Humanoid, in all but the green skin and wide pointed ears. Apparently female, although from what Rasmi knew of eir species, their biology didn't come with human-style genders. A single floodlight plus some intermittent sparks from a panel in the background lit up eir rosy eyes, eir mass of straw-colored hair with two lavender streaks in the front...and eir outfit, all green-black leather and torn lavender ribbons, accented by clasps and rings of some silver-white metal worked into exquisite vinelike designs.

No way that was a military uniform. On the other hand, it just might be a _sailor_ uniform.

"I am needing help," said the alien Sailor Senshi, in a stilted and accented version of Modern Standard Ra. "I am a Sailor Senshi. Please to be taking me to your leader."

 

***

 

A high screen at the foot of the room showed a first-time gymnast from Hathor taking gold in the high jump, while at the oblong table below a hasty conference of the Ennead gathered.

The Ra system's interplanetary council had nine members: Banebded, Sopdet, the other two Queens, and one elected representative from each of the five planets. (The Republic of Nepthys kept petitioning to have a second representative, in view of its lack of a Queen; the others, citing Nepthys' low population, kept voting the proposal down.) All except Banebded, Sopdet, and the Osiran representative were present only by hologram. At the virtual two-thirds of the table, advisers and interns kept flickering in and out of frame.

In a seat between Banebded and her elected counterpart sat the treeperson who had identified eirself as Sailor Makaiju.

"We have heard your story, and will do our best to come to a plan that benefits all," said Banebded smoothly. Her words were repeated by the interpreter, another treeperson, also present by hologram between the two Isis chairs. Ey was old and wizened, dark green skin the texture of an overripe plum, and evidently hard of hearing; but ey was the closest they had to a native speaker of the visitor's language, having emigrated as a child back before the interstellar flightlines went bust. "Allow us to offer you a room in my own palace while we deliberate."

"I thank you for your consideration, Your Greatnesses," said Sailor Makaiju in eir own language. "My planet will be deeply indebted to your help." Standing, ey switched back to Modern Standard Ra and added, "Peace upon you."

"Peace upon you," echoed the Ennead in ragged chorus, and remained silent as one of Banebded's aides led em out.

Once ey was out of earshot, all Hades broke loose.

"Does she think we have Sailor Senshi to spare?" demanded Sopdet, the Star Crystal flashing in its setting on her gown's chest. "As if we're a bunch of shiftless teenagers with nothing better to do! Three of us have queendoms to rule, one is a child, and one is still unawakened since that pesky revolution."

"Your Greatness will watch how she speaks," snapped the Nepthys representative. She wore a dark suit and tie with a topaz stickpin, a product of her planet's iconic mines. "There are more populists on Atum than you may like to admit."

"We can't just do nothing," said the Isis representative. His suit was similar, but decorated with flowers at his wrist and in his hair. "The treeperson community is a valued and respected part of the population of Isis. How will they feel if we ignore this plea from their homeworld?"

"We could send a battlestar," put in the Queen of Hathor. Red hair tumbled in a fiery waterfall over her golden skin. "Even if we can't loan her a senshi, enough well-trained shock troops with guns ought to make up the difference."

"All we have is a single person's word!" protested Banebded. "I for one will not order loyal soldiers of Osiris into unknown deep space that easily!"

The Isis representative glared hard at her. "Are you saying you don't trust em? Isis does not hold with that kind of speciesist rhetoric."

"It doesn't have to be an order," said the diminutive Queen of Isis, trying to make peace. "How many people would jump at an opportunity like this? Especially some of the soldiers who might never have made it offplanet if they hadn't joined up. Now they're offered a chance to explore strange new worlds beyond the system, to boldly go where no—"

"To boldly be exploited, you mean!" said the Nepthys representative. "The working class are always the first to—"

"Balderdash," snapped the fierce Queen of Hathor. "If I didn't have a government to run, I'd be first in line myself."

"'Run' is such a strong word..." began the Hathor representative, beside her.

"Not now," said his Queen testily. The representative shut up.

"If any of us could go...." said Banebded, suddenly thoughtful. The prince of Hathor was the eldest of the next generation. Not quite of an age to take the throne, as she recalled, but that was what advisers were for. "How old is your son?"

"Are you seriously suggesting I leave a fourteen-year-old boy in charge of a planet?"

"The elected council would be more than capable of...." offered the Hathor representative.

"I _said_ , not _now_ ," snarled his Queen.

The Nepthys representative looked pointedly at Sopdet. "A revolution to put your responsibilities in the hands of the people would be pretty handy right now, wouldn't it?"

"Over four hundred thousand people died in _your_ revolution," said Sopdet cheerfully, "so, with all peace and respect, go soak your head."

Her elected counterpart, the Atum representative, would ordinarily have stepped in here and done damage control for the youngest of the Queens. Not today, though. Today, he had spent the entire session more-or-less covertly watching the Games.

Banebded had her mouth open to propose something else when there was a flash of light in the middle of the room —

— and Sailor Osiris appeared on the table. Or rather, a few inches above the table, leading to her falling and landing on her butt on the mosaic surface.

At the door, both guards automatically raised their laser rifles. "Stow your weapons!" shouted Banebded. The holographic members of the Ennead stopped bickering and pulled up short, looking fruitlessly around their respective meeting rooms. The new arrival wasn't in the field of any of the holographic projectors, so anyone not physically within the Osiris council room had no idea who had just appeared.

It was a shame they couldn't see her, Banebded thought. Princess Amirah was a natural in the uniform. Banebded herself had the dark green hair of the Chronosian line, which clashed with the orange of the Sailor Osiris skirt, collar, and stockings. Amirah's hair was the same sun-gold as the uniform's ribbons, glove trim, and ballet flats: a beautiful match for skin dark as the richest soil. And although she was still a kid, all knees and elbows, she had somewhere found the grace to wield a staff taller than she was.

"Settle down, everyone," Sopdet told the assembly. "Princess Amirah, peace upon her, is abusing her newfound teleporting powers, that's all."

"I want to go!" blurted Sailor Osiris.

Sopdet nodded. "Door's that way."

"That's not what I mean!" Leaning on her staff, a striped shepherd's crook inlaid with jewels and a tiny pair of wings, Sailor Osiris levered herself to her feet. "Mama, let me go with Sailor Makaiju!"

"Darling, please," said Banebded, looking up into her daughter's face. Now she was glad the others _couldn't_ see: even though she knew the outfit had a modest bodysuit built in, that skirt was really terribly short. "This is complicated, adult business."

"It's _sailor senshi_ business," corrected the princess. "I'm a senshi."

"You're barely old enough to be transforming, much less—"

"I'm old enough to do the right thing!" Sailor Osiris stamped her beribboned foot. "That's what you said being a Sailor Senshi was all about. Being brave, and helping people, even if it meant risking your life. Just like Sailor Makaiju risked her life to get here and find allies!"

"'Allies' doesn't have to mean _you_."

The princess looked from Sopdet to the other two Queens, though of course they couldn't look back. "Was one of you planning to go?"

The Queen of Isis shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The Queen of Hathor opened her mouth to say something, then closed it with a huff.

"We all have armies," said Banebded gently.

Sailor Osiris' gloved hand tightened on her staff. "She needs _me_."

 

***

 

"You're sure you don't want to get in on this?" asked Khepri. She was carrying two of her bags down the halls of the _H.M.S. Lord of Silence_ , while Rasmi hauled the third. "They just might take a last-minute application."

"This whole thing has been last-minute," said Rasmi. "And even if I wanted to go, they had more than enough contenders. There was practically a riot on Atum when the shuttle with their share of the crew took off, didn't you hear?"

"I'm not surprised." Khepri paused for a minute to wrestle her long brown curls back into a fresh ponytail. "It's not every day you get a chance to escort a Crown Princess into deep semi-charted space. But what I mean is, they would take a last-minute app from _you_. You've got, what, the eighth best in-flight marksmanship on Osiris?"

"Eighteenth. And, listen, it's not too late for you to defect. Someone else would gladly take your spot."

"Are you kidding? ...This is my cabin." Khepri turned into the small, undecorated box of a space, furnished with two bunks in military brown. "I know you're not the biggest sailor senshi fan, but c'mon, what's the worst that can happen?"

"Sailor Makaiju could be leading you into a trap?"

"What could possibly be eir motivation for that? And even if ey were, what could be harder to trap than a fully-staffed battlestar?" Khepri tossed one bag onto the upper bunk, pushed the other up against the wall, and turned to Rasmi. "Hug?"

"Better make this good," said Rasmi, embracing her. "You know, in case I never see you again."

She was trying to make a joke. It fell flat.

"Of course you will," said Khepri against her ear. "Don't worry about a thing."

 

***

 

The afternoon's Games were canceled, the matches postponed to another day. Except for a few diehard badminton fans, everyone was glad to have no distractions during the liftoff.

Sailor Makaiju, who hadn't once dropped her transformation in all the days she had resided on Osiris, stood in front of a crowd of dignitaries and cameras and made a short, prepared speech. "You will be the heroes of my planet," she said, holding the attention of nearly every waking soul in the Ra system. "Thank you all!"

In orbit, at an angle to Osiris' moon Tatenen, the battlestar waited. It was staffed with the very best and brightest the military had to offer, pulled from the eager volunteers of all five planets. The starjumpers in its hangar were fitted with the finest lasers, the toughest engines. All the replicators had recently been tuned. There was a distinguished admiral in the captain's chair, and a four-star chef on duty in the mess hall.

In the shadows of Tatenen, where the moon confused both visual and radio signals, floated Rasmi's starjumper.

She wasn't authorized to be flying it. She certainly hadn't been ordered to do something like fly alone in the wake of the _Lord of Silence_. When the excitement planetside died down, someone was going to mark her AWOL, and probably pin the theft of a military jumper plus a couple crates of MREs on her shoulders.

So be it. She had a bad feeling about this whole thing, and would rather be dishonorably discharged than ignore it.

For once, her main comm screen was tuned to a broadcast from the surface. In this area the signal was jumpy and often pixelated, but she could see the podium where the sailor senshi from Makaiju stood, the camera angle wide enough to take in the airstrip behind em. A starjumper from the _Lord of Silence_ waited to carry em up out of the atmosphere as soon as eir speech was over.

The senshi gave one final wave to a crowd shouting words of praise and hope.

On her wrist, one of her thick gold bracelets glinted in the sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sailor Osiris ([source](http://sailorptah.deviantart.com/art/The-Last-Princess-of-Osiris-319589546)):


	2. Chapter 2

On E Deck of the Osiran battlestar _H.M.S. Lord of Silence_ , at about 0200 hours ship's time, a half-dozen security officers chosen by both skill and lottery to crew the first outsystem mission in over five generations were playing cards.

"Why is ship's time set to Osiris GMT, anyway?" demanded a short man with a square jaw, currently a sub-lieutenant from the Hathor Star Navy, as he put down two cards. "Aren't other planets' global meridians just as good?"

"Had to pick something," said the dark-haired woman to his left, a talented rookie from the Atum Royal Guard who could take apart and rebuild a laser pistol in fourteen seconds flat. "And the treeperson was staying in Osiris' capitol, until we left, right? Makes sense not to force her to adjust her internal clock twice if we can help it." She swapped one of the sub-lieutenant's cards with her own.

"Em," corrected a blue-haired ensign from Isis, taking a card from each of the three piles on the table and adding them to his hand.

"Sorry?"

"Treepeople don't have biological sexes. At least, not any that we have words for in Modern Standard. My best friend growing up was a treeperson, and ey really hated it when we didn't use the gender-neutral pronouns."

"Hang on," said the square-jawed sub-lieutenant. "If none of them are women, then how come some of 'em have...you know...?" He tried to mime cupping something in front of his chest without flashing his cards.

"Don't be crass," said a lieutenant from Atum, a muscular woman with tight-cropped pink curls and the fewest cards of any of them.

" _I'm_ being crass? Normally I wouldn't even notice, but with this 'un walking around in a leather bikini, how am I supposed to miss 'em?"

The blue-haired ensign from Isis attempted to kick him under the table. The dark-haired rookie from Atum yelped instead. The ensign tried again.

"Ow!" cried the square-jawed sub-lieutenant. "Cut that out, it's a reasonable question!"

"Then why don't you ask em yourself?" said the lieutenant from Atum, looking pointedly over his shoulder.

The sub-lieutenant looked. His cards fell to the table in a scattered heap. ("Perfect," groaned the blue-haired ensign. "And just when I was winning, too.")

"You are talking about me?" asked Sailor Makaiju, taking a couple of steps toward them on fishnet-clad legs the color of spring leaves. Eir heels clicked on the metal floors; narrow lavender ribbons fluttered at eir hips and wove through eir long wheat-blonde hair.

"No! Well, yes. But it's not important!" cried the square-jawed sub-lieutenant. "Hey, do you want to play a hand? We can deal you in."

The green senshi scanned the sparse room, the tight-bolted weapons lockers, the portal to the empty corridor. "The ones on guard duty...are you? And nobody else?"

"No need to worry, ma'am...uh, sir...er, your senshi-ness," stammered the muscular lieutenant from Atum. "Only reduced patrols called for. Rear Admiral's orders. After all, there are no civilians on the whole ship except for a couple science types, the princess (peace upon her), and yourself."

The senshi smiled. A light laugh shook eir biologically-not-breasts; a pleased light gleamed in eir pink-on-red eyes.

"I am glad to know it," ey said, raising eir arms. The jewels on eir bracelets glowed, sapphire-blue and palm-green. "Galactica Vines!"

Cards scattered like dust motes on the wind.

 

***

 

On an air mattress across the floor of her ship's cockpit, Rasmi woke with a start.

The alarm she had set wasn't going off; the AI showed ten minutes left before it would have sounded. She had no incoming calls to answer, no proximity alerts to avoid. This far out in deep space, there wasn't much of anything to be in proximity _to_ — the last one she'd gotten was more than a day ago, an object the size of a breadbox drifting in the opposite direction, presumably a piece of trash accidentally jettisoned from the battlestar. It had barely passed within three furlongs of her.

So why...?

Must be her body protesting the artificial sleep cycle, she thought, irritated at herself. She had been sleeping half an hour out of every four, a cycle designed to keep her awake as much as possible while giving her brain enough REM sleep to keep from hallucinating. It was a handy strategy for solo military personnel, even if in these days of relative peace it was used mostly by grad students in the last stages of their theses.

Well, she could try to sleep for ten more minutes, or she could write the sleep off and get moving. Rasmi decided to write it off. At this stage, a few more minutes in the sonic shower couldn't hurt.

 

***

 

"This is brilliant!" gushed the Osirite head of the science team, stepping back from the engine of the Makaiju craft and shaking his tablet as if that would make it process faster. "These equations...poetry! Do you see what this machine does with bosons? Do you _see_ the potential if we reengineered the battlestar to mimic it?"

His enthusiasm was partly because he had been up for thirty-four hours, fueled by a constant diet of coffee and jelly babies. In this state, he would have found a shoe sale brilliant. 

"It's pretty impressive, all right," said his second-in-command, a top space engineer who had collaborated with him on two prizewinning papers, "but maybe we should pursue this further after a nap? We'd all feel pretty silly if the ship's engines got taken out due to caffeine jitters."

"You don't appreciate how groundbreaking this is!" cried the head scientist. "More coffee!" he added to his assistant, a grad student from Isis who had been dozing in a chair at the side of the room for the past hour. She sat bolt upright and stumbled off to get it. (Everyone else on the science team had gone to sleep long ago.) "I think the Makaiju people have figured out FTL hopping without any corresponding life drain!"

That was, indeed, the implication the second-in-command was seeing on her own instruments — which was precisely why she didn't trust her sleep-deprived eyes just now. Traditional FTL hop drives ran on human energy, in such excessive amounts that it would literally take years off a participant's life. Every government in the Ra system had banned the practice as ethically indefensible. A more efficient hop drive was the holy grail of modern engineering. It was also theoretically impossible.

"And if we can get this to work, they'll probably name it after me," continued the head scientist. "How does 'the Radamès Hop Drive' sound? Great name, or _greatest_ name?"

"Boss, you know you won't be doing it alone...."

"Oh, I'll make sure you little people get spots on all the chat shows," said Radamès impatiently, waving his hands. "Oh, _why_ didn't we bring a particle accelerator? That would make this go so much faster!"

The second-in-command rubbed her eyes. "And, of course, you know it's possible that the ship's passenger used her power as a Sailor Senshi to fuel the thing, and it didn't achieve anything revolutionary at all."

"Why don't you ask her yourself?" The chief scientist grabbed a thermos of coffee out of the assistant's hands and strode across the lab, dodging desks and randomly piled devices. Sure enough, the senshi in question was at the door.

The assistant blinked. "When did ey get here?" she mumbled, before breaking into a wide, contagious yawn.

"Good news!" announced Radamès, trying to shake the treeperson's hand and drink his coffee all at once. "We've found a way to cut the travel time. Why, if this works, we might be able to reach your planet tomorrow!"

"It is good," said the senshi, toying with one of the straps on her leather bustier. "You are the only scientists, yes?"

"Oh, there are more, but they all quit to take naps a while back," said Radamès dismissively. "It's just us in the lab right now. History will have to know where to give the credit—"

"Galactica Vines."

Panels collapsed from the engine to clang against the floor, its remains belching smoke and sparks into the air.

 

***

The sleeping Princess Amirah wandered through a dreamscape, a desert of multicolored dunes lit by an unseen moon. She wore a plain white dress, and her golden hair was unbound. Jewel-like sand shifted in rainbow patterns under the dark skin of her bare feet. Turquoise, gold, orange.

A creature with a four-legged gait walked behind her. Unable to turn around, all she could see of it was the massive shadow beside hers across the sand. Periwinkle, pink, emerald-green.

"Peace upon you, guardian of girls' dreams," said Amirah out loud. "How come you haven't come to visit recently?"

 _This is a special circumstance,_ her companion replied. _I will not enter your dreams again._

Amirah pouted. "I'm not too old for you! Am I?"

_You have grown up quickly, little princess. You are about to face the battle of an adult, by your own decision. Please have courage, and remember that my thoughts are with you._

"I will," said Amirah firmly. The desert around her was violet, cornflower-blue, deep rose. "I'll be strong. I'll punish wrongdoers, and rescue the people of Makaiju, in the name of Osiris. And I'll come back to visit the Fields afterward, so I can tell you all about it."

Gold, darker gold, black.

 _Courage,_ repeated the guardian. _Remember._

 

***

 

The princess was woken by two thumps at her bedroom door.

She'd been given some of the most lavish quarters on the battlestar, which meant the walls had cheap mosaic paneling instead of steel-grey, and there was space in the shower for one and a half people instead of one. The recessed bunk boasted a stiff mattress with plain white sheets, a far cry from her featherbed in the palace with its gauzy curtains. A less dignified twelve-year-old would have made a fuss.

Amirah rolled out of bed, ready to give whoever had knocked a sleepy answer...and the movement brushed a fine spray of orange-gold sand off of her feet.

Words from the already half-forgotten dream echoed in her mind: _You are about to face the battle of an adult._

"Osiris Planet Power, Light Up," she whispered, and her nightgown collapsed into white ribbons, which clung to her before melting into the orange-and-gold fuku of Sailor Osiris. In a loud and hopefully queenly voice, she added, "Come in!"

No answer.

The princess pressed her gloved hand against the inside lock. The painted halves of the portal slid aside, disappearing into the wall.

Two bodies in shredded uniforms toppled backward over the threshold. The blood on their faces was still wet.

Sailor Osiris screamed.

 

***

 

A commodore from the Hathor Star Navy, on her last tour of duty before retiring and moving to that cottage by the seashore she'd always talked about, managed to slam the panic button. 

Around the mess hall, blast doors clanged shut and emergency locks hummed to life.

Squadrons of armed soldiers from all five planets, many still rubbing the cobwebs from their eyes, lined up at every exit point from the closed-off area. They had been chosen for their discipline, their bravery, and their ability to take orders in Modern Standard as well as their local dialects. No small amount of them were treepeople from Isis: less likely to join the army than humans in the first place, but given first priority for this mission to their home planet. They were ready.

One of the triple-plated blast doors bulged and shattered. Smoke poured through the opening.

"Hold your fire!" shouted the captain overseeing that hallway. He stood at attention and saluted as a dusty green figure stepped out into the hall. "Sailor Makaiju, sir! All respect to Sailor Senshi. Has the threat been eliminated?"

"This is a small detail, maybe," said the senshi, flipping back eir lavender-streaked hair, "but you should properly be calling me Sailor Magnesium Thorn."

 

***

 

In the CIC, Rear Admiral Shoteraja of Atum watched in horror as a structural diagram of the _Lord of Silence_ lit up with neon warnings. "Emergency, category one. I need everyone awake!" she ordered. "Ichi through Roku troops stationed between the engines and the hostile. Everyone else, to the upper decks. Now get me the engine room and let them know we're turning around."

The piloting AI was already working on the turn. They might not make it back to Osiris, but they were sure as Hades not going to reach Makaiju in this state. A manual officer looked up from the comm center. "No response from the engine room, sir."

Damn and blast. On the one hand, it meant the creature was only targeting people. If it hadn't left the hardware intact, they wouldn't have a prayer of getting some of their crew home in one piece. On the other hand, maybe it had held back on the killing blow because it was just that confident.

"New plan," snapped Shoteraja, and began outlining a series of troop movements. The comm officer set up the relays. On the diagram set to display life signs, tiny blue dots swarmed through the corridors. It was easy to guess which was Sailor Magnesium Thorn. The dots around em vanished in groups.

"Rear Admiral," said the man who might have been her one remaining commodore. "Shouldn't we summon Princess Amirah? Peace upon her, she's the one to deal with a rogue senshi, young though she is."

"Call her," said Shoteraja absently, in between ordering the pilots of Ni Squad to the starboard hangar bay. Spirits willing, it would still be intact.

Sailor Magnesium Thorn, along with less than half of the _Lord of Silence_ 's remaining troops, showed up in the port hangar bay. On the opposite side of the battlestar, two dozen fully-armed jumpers ejected into space and circled around the bulk of the massive warship.

"No response from the Princess' room," said the comm officer. "Showing no life signs."

Well, Shoteraja had always preferred to put her trust in lots of armed and trained soldiers rather than any lone twelve-year-old, no matter how much power the kid wielded. "Emergency protocol on port bay," she said darkly.

Though it was several decks away, she imagined she could hear the blast doors slamming shut. It was a state-of-the-art ship; those were quality doors. Closed, they could stay tight as an airlock.

"Sir?" said the captain of Ni Squad over the radio. "Awaiting orders."

Shoteraja closed her eyes. _Ra have mercy on me._ "Shields down. Fire."

 

***

 

On Rasmi's borrowed jumper, the radio pulled in the nightmarish conversation clear as a bell.

A military behemoth, the battlestar was designed to take a lot of fire in its own right. But not like this. Not with the shields on one deck deliberately down, its own jumpers on the attack instead of soaring out to defend it. Damage statistics were snapped back and forth on the radio, increasing by leaps and bounds.

And whatever menace they had tempted into the rapidly-failing deck, they had lured it there with people.

The MRE Rasmi had downed an hour or so earlier churned sickeningly in her stomach. Even if it was the only way, to imagine making that call....

"Sensors failed," said the Rear Admiral's voice. "Captain, what's going on out there?"

"Mostly explosions, Rear Admiral," reported the squad captain. "You just keep tabs on hull integrity. We'll take care of the rest."

Rasmi was a few light-seconds behind the battle. Even with both ships now closing the distance, the personnel-gutted battlestar limping back toward Ra, anything that happened was over and done before the news reached her.

"Operation complete, sir," said the captain at last, in a voice drained of emotion. "Hostile has been eliminated."

"Return to base," ordered the Rear Admiral. She sounded as if she had aged twenty years in the past half hour. "All remaining personnel, retreat to upper deck. We'll be sealing the next level of blast doors in the event of a hull integrity failure."

"Aye, sir."

"A lot of good soldiers gave their lives today. Their bravery will not be forgotten. May their hearts be weighed and found balanced. Peace upon them."

"Peace upon them," echoed a shaken chorus of the officers and staff that remained. Rasmi mouthed the words herself, even knowing they had already been said.

No sooner were they out of her mouth than a new, all-too-familiar voice crackled across the line. "I am not mentioning that I can teleport?"

 

***

 

The CIC echoed with shouts. Laser fire. Crackles and sparks. A laugh.

"Galactica Seedling Myrmidon!" shouted Sailor Magnesium Thorn. Brittle plants heavy with black thistles exploded up from the floor, blocking whatever fire they aimed at her. A pipe that had run beneath the deck exploded, sending a jet of water up at an angle to spatter the ceiling and rain down on consoles. The demonic plants drank it in.

"Order the jumpers back!" yelled Shoteraja over the cacophony. "Tell them not to dock. Tell them to run!"

And she leaped between the comm officer and the senshi, just in time to be bludgeoned by an onrush of thorny green-black vines. She would never learn whether it made a difference.

"Stupid _heroes_ ," muttered Magnesium Thorn, as the Rear Admiral's bloodied body fell to the ground with a bone-snapping crack. "Galacti—"

"NECROPOLIS FLOOD!"

Dark water thundered across the CIC, slamming the braceleted senshi into the railing behind the captain's chair and disintegrating every plant it touched.

"Galactica Vines!" shouted Magnesium Thorn, blasting fresh growths at the new arrival. This batch made it past Sailor Osiris' defenses to wrap her in a towering tangle, digging into her magically-reinforced uniform and bruising her exposed skin. She screamed.

It might have ended then, if not for the ship's last commodore, who leaped at Magnesium Thorn from behind and made a valiant attempt to snap eir neck.

While ey was returning the favor, Sailor Osiris managed to stop screaming long enough to materialize the Enduring Sunset Rod. Even with her arms bound almost to immobility, the multicolored crook-and-flail staff was able to slice through her prison. The vines dissolved into ash; she fell to the ground, landing on her knees in a puddle, only the staff's support keeping her from collapsing.

She wasn't ready for this. The next attack would kill her. She'd been useless. Worse than useless....

The next attack didn't come.

"Princess! Fire!"

Sailor Osiris raised her head.

The three still-living members of the bridge crew had tackled Magnesium Thorn to the deck. The combined weight and skill of all of them was just enough to hold em down. The man was the son of a veteran of the Nepthys revolution, who had grown up hearing his mother's stories of heroes and friends lost. The woman was a farmer's daughter from Hathor, an expert pilot as long as she was on medication to control her crippling fear of heights. And the treeperson was a linguist from Isis, on eir second ever trip off-planet.

"Fire," repeated the linguist from Isis. "Use the strongest thing you've got."

"I...I can't...!"

"You have to!" said the pilot from Hathor. Her sock stuffed in Magnesium Thorn's mouth was the only thing keeping another attack from tearing them all apart. "We can't take any chances. If you make it, the rest of the crew survives. If you fail, we're dead anyway!"

"No one was supposed to die!" wailed Sailor Osiris. "We were s-s'posed to help her! Sailor senshi are supposed to help each other!"

"Shake it off, princess!" shouted the veteran's son from Nepthys, as Magnesium Thorn wrenched one hand free and raked bloody scratches down his trouser leg. "You have to help yourself now! How will your mother feel if you don't get safely home?"

Tears rolling down her cheeks, Sailor Osiris pulled herself to her feet. She ached, body and soul. The staff was cool and soothing in her hands.

" _Djed_ S-soul Sunset!" she choked, bathing the shattered CIC in orange-gold light.

 

***

 

All was quiet on the night side of Osiris. In the capitol, the winners, losers, and avid viewers of the Games slept equally deeply.

High above the planet's surface, a cylindrical container floated in orbit.

From a distance, or to an untrained eye, the semitransparent material used to make the cylinder would have looked like a sort of rose-tinted glass. In fact, it was about 87% strong magic, 12% quarks arranged in a lattice calculated to stymie the laws of physics, and 1% artificial flavoring. Its contents could have been held in check by nothing less.

The object ambled past a communications satellite or two, made a transit of the crescent Tatenen, bobbed under a state-of-the-art telescope that spent its days and nights sending Osiran astronomers high-resolution images of far-off stars. If only the telescope had been pointed the other way. Everything it had ever photographed paled in importance next to the thing it had just missed.

After a span of time that had no meaning, logic, or pattern — in a word, it was _chaotic_ — the barriers melted away.

The singularity was released.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sailor Magnesium Thorn ([source](http://sailorptah.deviantart.com/art/Sailor-Magnesium-Thorn-161459145)):


	3. Chapter 3

"What do you mean, a _black hole?_ "

"Singularity. Gravity well so dense not even light can escape," said Queen Banebded of Osiris's spectacularly unhelpful advisor.

"I know what it is! And I know they don't appear out of nowhere! Now you expect me to believe one just popped into existence next to the planet?"

"It's the only solution that explains the readings we're getting," said her advisor, striding along with Banebded and two guards toward the Situation Room. "Not to mention the tidal catastrophes, the earthquakes, the stars in the wrong position...Your Greatness, we're getting pulled out of orbit."

"Evacuate coastal areas," said Banebded automatically. "And anything on a fault line. Mobilize the Royal Planetary Guard; commandeer the commercial airliners. What's the safest place on the planet?"

"There is no safe place on the planet right now. Possibly no safe place in the solar system, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

They reached a fork in the palace halls, and turned...the wrong way. "What are you doing? Situation Room's to the left."

"We're not going to the Situation Room. We're going to the starport."

 

***

 

"H-h'lo?"

The words jolted and stuttered, partly because a non-expert was fiddling with the connection, partly because that non-expert was standing in a room full of corpses.

"E-ey's dead. Hostile is dead," she said, breath catching. The broken pipes had left a half-inch of water flooding the deck around her feet, filthy with grime and rust and things she couldn't stand to think about. "Everyone, if you're still alive, p-please come to the CIC...I don't know what that stands for...the bridge, you know? Only b-be careful, there are lots of warning signs on this screen, and I don't know what they mean but some of them look electrical...answer me, please...."

All at once the comm lit up with a voice she didn't recognize. "Confirm. Sailor Magnesium Thorn is dead?"

"Yes!" cried Princess Amirah. She didn't have to double-check. The last attack had turned her opponent, along with several of her allies, into a smear of soot on the paneling. "Definitely dead. I...Sailor Osiris...k-killed her."

"You did good, Your Highness, peace upon you," said the voice abruptly. "My name's Rasmi, and I'm on a jumper outfitted for long-term spaceflight. The ship's enabled for E-space communication, 2-D only, but physically I'm about ten light-seconds away from you, understand? There's an option to enable visuals on this channel, should be a toggle in one of your menus. Can you switch it on?"

Amirah felt around on the console. That was the sign for visual signal, right? She flipped the switch.

"I'm hailing the _Lord of Silence_ 's other pilots, so if any of them are still in their ships, they should be joining the conversation soon. I heard something about a battle. Can you tell me what's...aha! There's the signal."

A screen four hands above Amirah's head had abruptly sprung to life. There was a crack down one corner, leaving part of the image greyed out, but most of it was intact. The pilot on the other end was a young woman in the uniform of the Osiris Star Navy, with brilliant green eyes set in a face almost as dark as Amirah's, and short hair so blonde it was practically white. She looked about the age to be a college student, which to Amirah seemed amazingly mature.

"H-hi, Rasmi," said Amirah faintly. And then, because you had to be polite when you were a princess, "Peace upon you."

"Same to you, Your Greatness," said the pilot. "Take a good look at my ship, okay? If things get too bad over there, if you start getting lightheaded or if there are a lot of sparks and explosions, you can teleport straight here. If it's safe right now, can you tell me about the scene around you? Any kind of detail will help."

"It's b-bad," said Amirah, feeling scared and lost all over again. "My guards were killed. Everyone on the bridge was killed. All the b-big screens are broken, and some of the controls...I think the ones we steer with, those are gone. I can still b-breathe and everything, though. I tried to make the AI help me, but it wouldn't answer. I think it's d-dead too...."

Rasmi looked horrified for a moment, but covered it quickly. "It's okay. Even without the AI, there are backup systems. You can do things manually. Now listen carefully, because I'm going to walk you through a basic diagnostic, to find out how the ship is doing...."

 

***

 

Every spacecraft approaching Osiris had been ordered to turn away. Every starship planetside was gathering passengers as quickly as it could.

And in an observation tower on the highlands north of the capitol, a single astrophysicist was enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"These data are unbelievable, Ruqayya," said one of her colleagues from Hathor. He, along with a dozen others, was present by hologram from the shoulders up. "If the numbers you're getting are right...and there's no guarantee that they are, if our theories about the distortion provided by the gravity well are even remotely accurate...you all should be torn apart by the gravitational forces within a couple of hours!"

"I know!" gushed Ruqayya. Her hair was almost entirely silver, but her eyes, behind owlish spectacles, were sharp as ever. "Isn't it exciting?"

"It's _insane_ ," said a grad student from Isis. "Why don't you get to a ship? With your knowledge and expertise, I'm sure they'd give you some kind of priority...."

"Pish tosh. First of all, maybe if I were a Gebelese athelete they'd bump me up the queue, but nobody puts that much value on us stargazers. Second, I'm an old bird, haven't you noticed? Let some young thing with their whole life ahead of them take my spot. I will die as I have lived: doing _science!_ After you start making world-changing discoveries with the information I'm transmitting, you can honor me by awarding me some posthumous medals for babysitting all the instruments."

Another astronomer, currently on Hathor but native to Osiris, blinked back his tears and reported, "Total mass appears to be slightly less than Osiris itself. P-probably just under half a hand across. Is that consistent with what everyone else is getting...?"

Nods and murmurs of assent from the other four planets. Only a doctoral fellow on Nepthys was shaking her head. "Can't be right. It's what I'm getting, but there has to be an error. Any black hole that size could only have been formed by the residual forces of the Big Bang...and quantum radiation means it should have evaporated by now."

"Not so," said Ruqayya, smirking and calibrating the telescope's sensors at the same time. "Such a black hole could also have been created...in the Galaxy Cauldron."

The colleague from Hathor groaned. "Ruqayya, please. You're about to _die_. And die in the process of gifting vital scientific knowledge to everyone who survives. Don't let our last memory of you be tainted by these...fairy tales."

Ruqayya glared at his projection over the tops of her spectacles. "Young man, you are not the one about to die here. Let me decide how I want to be remembered."

 

***

 

The gutted bulk of the H.M.S. _Lord of Silence_ was in view. Rasmi was minutes away — not at light speed, but at the speed of her craft. Even if she was unable to dock, it would ease the strain on any teleport Princess Amirah tried to do.

What was the upper limit on senshi teleport distance? She couldn't remember. For all she knew, the Princess could have 'ported back to Osiris from here without breaking a sweat. But better safe than sorry.

"I see...lots of blue dots," the Princess — or, more properly, Sailor Osiris — was saying. The words gave Rasmi hope until the girl began counting. "Two, four, six, eight...." All the way up to: "Twenty, twenty-one! No, twenty-three, there are a couple on another deck. Wait — another one just appeared...."

And then she screamed.

This time, Rasmi could see for herself why. Some kind of energy field had swallowed the entire length of the battlestar: dark and crackling, swallowing light and spitting it back in electrical charges that should never have been possible in a vacuum.

It stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Sailor Osiris was on the floor, panting for air, her uniform singed and torn. Leaning on the much-abused staff, she hauled herself back up to the comm controls and clung to the edge of the console. "Rasmi!" she cried, throat raw, eyes misty. "Rasmi, the screens all broke! Are you still there?"

"Still here," said Rasmi quickly. "I still see you. Listen, you need to—"

And then she gasped, because a new figure had appeared in the flickering light behind Princess Amirah, one whose look Rasmi didn't like at all.

She was another Sailor Senshi. That much was clear from the general design: collar fastened by a brooch, bodysuit, short skirt, flashy boots. But every scrap of it, from her headdress to her epaulets to her high heels, was made of plates of golden metal that clanked as she took a step forward. They matched the bracelets on her slender wrists, which in turn matched the ones Sailor Makaiju — no, Sailor Magnesium Thorn — had worn.

Either she'd had the random luck to get an outfit that coordinated with those bracelets...or she was their source.

 

***

 

All nonessential personnel had vacated the starport that housed Osiris Star Navy One, taking off in whatever ships could carry them. All remaining staff were starting to feel queasy.

Queen Banebded had sent away her advisers, her guards, every palace worker who had come by. "I'll get a ride on the next one," she assured them. "No one will kick me out. Go on, now. Take my space." And, to her security, "I may not be Sailor Osiris, but I can still defend myself. Go!"

The only craft left was OSN One itself. Its rooms and chambers were being packed with everyone in walking distance of the starport: right now, that meant the motley crew of political agitators from various causes who were always camped at the palace gates, moving in single file toward the ship's hatch.

A woman in a dark pencil-skirted suit, with violet clips pinning back her black curls and a sheaf of notes from a planned speech still under her arm, broke from the line and approached the observation deck. Several techs shouted for her to stop; she flashed her ID, marking her a member of the People's Council of Osiris, and made it to where Banebded stood, alone.

"Your Greatness," she said, sketching a quick bow. "Peace upon you — You don't plan to go."

"Do you have a problem with that?"

"Yes!" cried the councilor, with a vehemence that surprised them both. "You're a symbol of hope and unity for everyone on Osiris! If — if what the news is saying about the planet is true — we'll need you soon more than ever!"

"A queen who flees when her people are in trouble, taking a spot that anyone's child or friend or loved one could have used, would be exactly the wrong kind of unifying symbol," said Banebded bitterly. "First into battle, and last to retreat. That's my role. My daughter, when she returns, will take the symbol-of-hope spot."

"And your daughter will need the support of her mother," countered the councilor. "Take — take _my_ spot. Please. You should have it. I'm nobody."

The ghost of a genuine smile flickered on the Queen's lips. "Councilor Usaimah. Populist community organizer in Kellis, credited with bringing literacy rates from abysmal to third in the district. Later elected governor of the entire Mothite nome, and, after balancing the budget by your second term, ran for People's Council with the anti-Monarchist party. I would hardly call you 'nobody'."

Usaimah was stunned. "Can you rattle off the backgrounds of everyone in the Assembly?"

"Yes. I can spend the rest of my life demonstrating it, if you like."

Slowly, the councilor shook her head. "Your Greatness...I hope you know...the reason I joined the party I did was never because you were a bad ruler. Just the opposite. Almost anyone else would have made our ambitions a whole lot easier."

"You're very kind," said the Queen. "And you, not I, are the kind of leader the people of Osiris are going to need from now on."

"Well, I'm not going," said Usaimah stubbornly. "I gave my spot to you. That won't mean anything if I take it."

"Then...." At first Usaimah thought she was going to be ordered away; but then the royal mask of serenity slipped, and the woman before her looked sad, so sad. "Would you keep me company?"

 

***

 

"You're the only senshi who answered Makaiju's call for help?" said the Golden Senshi, in a rich, bored alto. "All this fuss over a single Sailor Crystal? Two or three fewer bodyguards, and Magnesium Thorn would have had it by now, instead of being reduced to a grass stain at the last minute."

"D-don't come any closer!" warned Sailor Osiris. Collapsed against the short-circuting console, legs too weak to stand on their own, she barely managed to aim her staff.

"Yours probably isn't even mature yet," sighed the intruder. "And I enjoyed that plant sailor, too. What a waste."

Summoning what scraps and fragments remained of her power, Sailor Osiris clutched her staff between threadbare gloves. " _Djed_...Soul...!"

The Golden Senshi held up her bracelets. Two discs of golden light shot forth from the gemstones, arcing around the wreck of the CIC.

"...Sunset!" finished Sailor Osiris, and blasted the intruder with everything she had.

A dark chuckle was all she heard from the intruder before the discs slammed into her.

"Teleport!" shouted Rasmi's voice on the speakers, sounding very far away. "Princess! You have to—"

 

***

 

The mostly-empty starport had been built to last. Outside its walls, the ground cracked and shifted; buildings were uprooted, vehicles flung about like dice. Within, a massive crack had appeared in the ceiling a few minutes earlier, but the walls were still standing, the chairs that Banebded and Usaimah had commandeered still upright.

Out of nowhere, a column of pink light materialized in front of them. Usaimah, not used to such things, jumped in her seat. Banebded, who had experienced them from the inside, just smiled. "Hi, Sopdet."

Sailor Atum answered with a breathless, flashy curtsy. "Hi, Ban. Me and the other senshi have been 'porting people off-planet, one by one. I've got about one jump left, and I'm going to go turn loose the Hoshizuishou on this thing. But in case that doesn't work, I figured I'd get as many people as possible off first."

Banebded stood up straight. (Usaimah stood up too, for politeness' sake.) "Sopdet. Doing that will kill you. Whether it works or not."

The youngest Queen gave her a lospided grin. "Then I'd better try really hard to make it work, huh?"

"You'd better," agreed Banebded, pulling her friend into a tight hug. Neither needed to voice her goodbyes; everything they needed to say was in the embrace.

"I should probably clarify," added Sailor Atum, stepping back but keeping ahold of Banebded's hands. "I have enough strength left to get one more person to the nearest planet, _then_ to hop out in front of the black hole."

"Good," said the last Queen of Osiris. Pulling out of her friend's grasp, she slapped Usaimah's back, shoving her at the senshi. "Take her."

Rabbit-quick, Sailor Atum grabbed the councilor's hands and shouted, "Atum Planet Power Teleport!"

Banebded was alone before she had a chance to regret it.

 

***

 

The body of the last Princess of Osiris disintegrated into ash, leaving a nothing but a single sparkling crystal of bright golden orange. The Enduring Sunset Rod splashed to the floor, water soaking through its feathers and the straps of its flail, its legendary shine gone dull.

"One down."

The Golden Senshi eyed the flooded puddles on the lower half of the CIC, wrinkled her nose at the idea of getting her boots dirty, and held out her hand. The Sailor Crystal of Osiris flew obediently into her palm.

"I know you're listening, little soldier in the distance," she said out loud, clasping her fingers around the gem. "I don't know exactly where you are, but I know where you're going. Your system is, let's be honest, not high on my list, so I'll let you escape...for now. Run along home. Tell your local Sailor Senshi and all their little allies to learn to fear the name _Galaxia_."

 

***

 

Against the night sky at the edge of the Ra system, Sailor Atum hovered at the event horizon of the black hole and held the Hoshizuishou forward.

Not far away, the surface of Osiris buckled and distorted. It wasn't a sphere any more but an oblong, its continents flooding with impossibly high tides as the black hole pulled the nearer oceans away from the planet, and the planet itself away from the farther oceans. She couldn't imagine the chaos below.

She didn't even know what was going on in the Reed Fields: the world of dreams, born of the hopes and wishes of everyone in the Ra system. Would their otherworldly nature preserve them, or, with Osiris demolished, would part of the Fields be destroyed too?

"Please, Tithoes!" cried Sailor Atum. The soundless emptiness of space swallowed her words, even with magic filling her lungs. "Protect everyone's hearts!"

The voice of the ancient guardian roared like thunder in her exhausted soul, expanding and overflowing until her uniform blossomed into a new form. Pink and periwinkle softened to gradients on fabrics of purest white; the water-lily symbol of Atum replaced her tiara; the thin ribbons tied at her waist billowed out behind her; swan-hued wings briefly unfurled from her shoulder blades.

Queen Sopdet had become Super Sailor Atum, for the first and last time.

 _The Star Crystal follows your heart,_ she remembered her father telling her, and poured all of herself into a single pure wish: _Let this menace be erased from the sight of Ra, never to reappear. Let this become a system where my daughter, my Rose, can live and grow up happily without ever having to fear such a threat._

 

***

 

Seven-year-old Princess Rose of Atum, kept blissfully ignorant in a tutoring session where the tutor was secretly itching to get away and check a news feed, let out a cry and pushed her chair back so hard it fell over.

A few moments later, cheers went up all around the manor house, and everyone who might have minded the child was busy glued to the news and/or joyfully hugging anyone else within reach. _It worked! Our Queen did it! We're not all going to die!_

The guard at the Star Crystal's display room was minimal right now anyway, and the AI knew Rose was to be trusted; nobody stopped her from running in and charging straight up to the pedestal. On the dais lay the four shattered fragments of what had been the Hoshizuishou.

Rose gathered the pieces into her hands and hugged them like a broken doll, understanding.

 

***

 

Rasmi should have been sick, or furious, or a sobbing wreck in the back of her jumper. Instead, all she felt was numb.

Numb as she walked through the corridors of the battlestar, floating when the artificial gravity failed, wearing her emergency spacesuit for those times she came through a section where the ventilation system had been compromised or simply shut off.

Numb as she raided the mess hall for an armload of nonperishables, to supplement her rations on the solo flight back.

Numb as she stripped the dog tags from every body she came across. Her friend Khepri's was outside the science lab, rigor mortis just setting in. With fingers clumsy from the suit's heavy padding, Rasmi closed her friend's eyes.

Numb as she dodged sparks in the CIC, and, seeing the faintest glint of gold, took a chance in the water to retrieve the sopping staff.

For a moment, maybe several, she pondered not going back. Standing on the roof of her jumper, pulling off her helmet, and letting outer space do its work. The _Lord of Silence_ would drift on forever, maybe not passing by an inhabited system for the next million years. Back in the orbits of Ra's five planets, there would be people who held out hope that the ship had completed that noble rescue mission it had never been on in the first place. All these soldiers and scientists and one astonishingly brave young princess would pass into legend, and then into myth.

But no. Rasmi set her AI on a course back to the planet, before collapsing into her bunk to catch up on sleep. The friends and loved ones of the dead crew, especially those on Osiris, would want to know the truth.

And of course, she had a warning to deliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sources for the artwork:  
> [Rasmi and Sailor Osiris](http://sailorptah.deviantart.com/art/I-ll-Get-You-Out-Of-There-320614201)  
> [Super Sailor Atum](http://sailorptah.deviantart.com/art/The-Queen-and-the-Black-Hole-406570176)
> 
> Profiles of the senshi so far (with spoilers through the end of this story) will be linked on [the off-AO3 index page](http://ptahrrific.dreamwidth.org/171018.html).


End file.
